Rodney Wilson
The focus of this piece is on Dance for the Camera, because it is what I know about. It is not intended to exclude or comment adversely on the brilliant dance films made elsewhere. Many others I have worked with share a similar vision about dance and the camera. Unfairly, I want to single out a few: Bob Lockyer, Lloyd Newson, Margaret Williams, David Hinton, Darshan Singh Bhuller, and Henk van der Meulen, who knowingly or not, made me think harder and more seriously about dance and its relationship with television.
In the eighties, television showed dance programmes, partly as duty, partly for love. This love was often, in my view, misdirected. Too often it seemed to go with the notion that art and culture only happen somewhere else; in theatres, galleries and concert halls. Television's role is to broadcast this high culture, these examples of great art to the wider population, doing them good in the process. To my eyes it was a strange mixture of the cynical and the over-reverential. Sometimes it seemed as though these broadcaster champions of the arts did not really like the medium they worked in, but were equally unwilling to recognise any other approach to making dance films. Some things bring out the subversive in me. One of them is to be told that recording full-length ballets is such an important contribution to world culture that anything else is an unwelcome distraction, even a waste of time and money. Well, we will see about that.
Thinking back, I see myself as a bit of an interloper. I did not really know how much I liked dance or what sort of dance I liked. Co-commissioning dance films with Michael Kustow, then Arts Commissioning Editor at Channel 4, I realised I was more interested in looking at dance through a camera lens on location than on a stage. The affinities between dance and cinema fascinated me. At the heart of this connection between the two forms was movement. During production of one of these films, Lloyd Newson, sitting on a table in a cutting room, said he understood what he could do with film; choreograph the movement of an eyelid in the way he choreographed a body on stage. This became a sort of emblematic statement, not the only one, but crucial in crystallising a vision of what was possible. It resonated and connected.
In 1943, Maya Deren made A Study in Choreography for the Camera. Her interest was in cinematic space rather than dance, but she chose to use a dancer to articulate a formal, theoretical concept. The dancer moves through discontinuous locations, from a forest to an interior, with an apparently continuous movement. The film was 2 minutes 30 seconds long. At the Arts Council, one of my colleagues, David Curtis, came up with an idea for very short works made by film and video artists. We persuaded the BBC to join us and launched 1Minute Television, a project to commission one minute films for BBC2. Another connection.
The film avant-garde contributed unwittingly to Dance for the Camera, not least in providing the inspiration for the title. Other factors played their part. If television was to be persuaded, there had to be a meeting point. The same is true for choreographers, of course. If television was to be more than something done to choreographers, often with results they hated, there had to be a new role for them. Bob Lockyer and I talked a lot. Gradually the elements fell into place. What emerged was the idea of collaborations, a synthesis of film and choreography, with specially created music/sound design as an organic part of the project, designed for the screen. These works would be in a series of short length programmes, with its own title, because this was a language television understood and audiences could relate to. The Arts Council would collaborate with the BBC in financing the programmes, so there was a mixture of artistic, institutional, financial and political factors. An underlying ambition for me was to create a format and a brand name, because this is part of the currency of television. What can that currency buy you?
When talking about Dance for the Camera, and when discussing the projects choreographers and directors want to make, we often say "it must work on television". If you look at this objectively, it both makes sense and does not make sense. Is the weather report or the news, better television than coverage of a football match, or transmission of a Hollywood feature film? What is considered good television changes all the time and is different from one programme category to another. Television is a channel, a process without an identity of its own. At the same time if something does not work on the screen, it is very obvious. The main point about the format of Dance for the Camera is that it allows diversity. The one thing we did not define about the series was a style or type of dance, or a particular filmmaking approach. Considerations of sexual identity, age, gender, disability, social dance, professional and non-professional performers, cross-over, the post modern mix, are all possible within a format which is easily described. Dance shades into movement, new combinations and challenges emerge. That the brand has been created to the extent it has, is thanks to the BBC who continue to support the initiative ten years after the first steps were taken.
New factors are emerging as we go into the 5th series, special because it is the first in which the Arts Council and BBC have joined forces with NPS, Netherlands. A lurking issue about close-up and character, acting and casting has surfaced. The camera always records what is in front of it with the same unflinching documentary eye. It can be shockingly revealing in close-up. Is it better to cast an actor who dances, rather than a dancer who maybe does not act so well? Is this the final heresy, or is that reserved for the imperative of narrative? The audience's primary experience of a dance film is a screen experience and they are sophisticated in their expectations. It does not mean there is only one filmmaking model that must be followed, but it does suggest we should not underestimate our audiences.
It is often asked whether dance for the screen is a new art form. We cannot agree on what to call it, dance film; videodance; dance programme; or possibly digital dance, but the answer is obviously yes. If by any mischance it is not, in my view it does not matter, because it does everything art does anyway, and what more can you ask for? The future of dance film seems extremely bright, despite the shortage of money and difficulties in reaching audiences. The wheel has turned and now it is hard to imagine anyone saying they are not making dance specifically for the screen. It seems self-evident it is the only way to go.
It isn‘t Dance, You can‘t see their feet
A personal view of television and dance
A personal view of television and dance
